Rolling Thunder Cyclocross Race November 1st and 2nd

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

On sunday the winning break away was formed within 60 seconds of hitting dirt. My teammates Brendan Halpin and Adam Jensen were in our group of five. Toby (with unspellable last name) and Brian from Bozeman rounded out the group. Halpin road hard. By hard I mean he did 90% of the work to make the gap and the first time I looked back I couldn't see the peleton. Up the road was another teammate Erik Digby who wins major points in my book for killing himself the first 15 miles and still hanging in for a solid finish. We took turns pulling but for the most part we were a disorganized break. Someone would just ride hard, the rest of us would follow. Toby, Adam, Brendan and I ride mountain bikes together quite a bit, so it felt like a hard group ride. We had no intentions of attacking each other. We road thru the first lap really relaxed on the dirt. I had a feeling it was going to get ugly the last 10 miles so I fueled up well and ate all the gu I could. When we had 20 miles left we all new we could stay away. That is when we decided to make Toby and Brian work a bit. Brendan, Adam and I traded turns putting in half hearted attacks. Then we all eased up on a decent. I tucked a bit and got about 30 meters without trying, they were not exactly chasing. I rode tempo for about 30 seconds, looked back, no one near. Then I rode as hard as I could til the end of the dirt heading back to frenchtown. When I looked back there was no one insight. This may have been a solo ride of 15 miles to the finish, but I still feel like it was a complete team race. I had two teammates in the break, who sat in once I was off the front, along with another 8ish guys in the peleton staying fresh. Just look at the finish results. It was an orange and blue landslide. I had a guy from spokane tell me he kept trying to organize a chase but all he could find was 5vv guys smiling and resting up. Well that's it. Maybe now I can move up to the big boy race's.

3 comments:

I was the domestique on Sunday. Great racing by Elliot and Brendan for bridging the gap and breaking up the peloton! AND you've got to love the team effort we've put in over the past two weeks. See you up the road.